


The Basement

by Miss_Snazzy



Series: In Which Modern Characters Frolic in Thedas [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, F/M, Gun Violence, Hawke betrayed Fenris, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, Modern Girl in Thedas, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Domestic Violence, Post-Betrayal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 02:27:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11911293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Snazzy/pseuds/Miss_Snazzy
Summary: Wherein the wall between two different realities thins enough to allow Fenris and Helena to take solace in each other during their imprisonment.[Post Alone Quest (Fenris Companion Quest, Act 3)]





	The Basement

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted as five parts in my ficlet collection, "And Other Tales."  
> The next chapter will feature new content.
> 
> Mind the Tags.

1.

A door slams and Fenris stares at the hunched form across the room.  He wonders what it will be today—her colorful cursing or that odd humming.

One arm curls around her midsection as she eases herself up.  Though her cheek leaves the strange stone beneath her, she remains sprawled forward on her other hand.

Fenris listens to her wheeze and finds he almost misses the usual noise.  He huffs out a sigh.

"Straighten your back and lean against the stone."

Fenris watches her tense and frowns.  Had she heard him?

"It will aid in your breathing," he continues.

Her face tilts up and she meets his gaze for the first time.  The shock slips into a vacancy he finds disconcerting, if only for his own familiarity with the expression.

"And now I'm hallucinating.  Great."  She huffs but uncurls, shuffling backwards to the wall behind her.

Fenris frowns.

"I am no apparition."

She leans her head back, gaze settling on the ceiling.  Her arm remains wrapped around her abdomen.  A broken rib, Fenris surmises.

"Sure."  She sighs.  "If you're real, then why aren't you screeching 'demon' at me, yet?"

"I do not screech."

She seems to concede that point with a nod.

She stretches out her legs in front of her, hissing when she puts weight on her left foot during the adjustment.  Fenris wonders if the ankle or the arch ails her this time.

"So..." 

Fenris glances up to find her gaze settled on him, even as her head remains tilted back. 

"You don't think I'm a demon?"

Fenris follows the trail of blood from her temple into her hair.  He remains uncertain whether the shade is a natural dark or an indication of how much blood she has lost...or taken.

"I have not ruled it out."

Fenris watches her blink.

"Oh.  Right.  Makes sense."

She closes her eyes and Fenris listens to the near whistle of her breath.  He wants to tell her to stop exposing her jugular.

Fenris says nothing.

 

2.

Fenris doesn't know what it is, but it makes her docile.

When the man comes, she favors caution, the stone at her back, arms half-raised at her sides, but gaze always focused on him.  She counters every movement with one of her own, evading his attacks before they can become so.

But the walls push close and these steps last only as long as the man remains willing to indulge them.

His grip sends her into a flurry of movement each time—punches and jabs and vicious kicks and vicious teeth around thick fingers until—well.

Fenris doesn't know what it is, but he knows a weapon when he sees one.

The man presses the smooth, metal weapon to her temple and she stills.

The man chuckles.

"You ready to listen now?" the man asks.

She doesn't speak.  Fenris doesn't think she dares to breathe.

"You better fucking answer me," the man snarls, pressing the metal harder into her temple.

A distinct click follows and she gasps.

"Yes!  Yes!  I'm fucking listening, okay?" she yells, recoiling.

The man pulls back his armed hand and strikes her across the cheek with the metal.  The blow sends her to her knees, and Fenris watches her cough up blood.

The man towers over her, the weapon idling against his meaty right thigh and bunching the fabric of his modified trousers.  Fenris might have mistaken their short length for an ill-fitting hand-me-down had the lines not been so clean.

His adornments could not match Danarius and his tailored robes, but Fenris could see the man echoed in his harsh jaw and harsher mouth—a mouth which curls with the pleasure of pinning a butterfly beneath glass just to watch it twitch.

"You are a coward," Fenris tells the man.

Neither the man nor the girl acknowledges him.  They never do.

"What'd your mom say about cussin'?" the man reprimands.

Fenris watches her fists clench and realizes he has clenched his own.  He forces the digits to uncurl.

No use bloodying them again.

 

3.

"You know, for a figment of my imagination, you're kind of poorly written," she muses.  Her knees remain curled toward her torso despite the wince Fenris watched her make when she chose the position.

Fenris sighs, frowning as the air further dries his mouth.

"Don't get me wrong," she continues, "you aren't unbelievable.  I mean, I might've let it slide if I was reading someone else's fanfic, but..." her lips twist, "I guess I just thought I was a better writer than this."

"Drink your water before you begin to spout more nonsense," Fenris rasps.

"See?  That's exactly what I'm talking about."  She pushes a finger at him in a movement much too listless to call a jab.  "We both know this crap is probably poisoned."  She flaps a hand at the strange, yet somehow familiar dish of water across from her in disgust.  "Not to mention undignified."

Fenris relaxes his weight further into the wall behind him.  He ignores the increasing ache as the cold stone leaches more warmth from his skin.

He recalls Hawke’s mabari and grimaces, finally placing that familiarity.

"Why would your captor waste the poison?" Fenris wonders.  The man makes no secret of his enjoyment in tormenting her.  Death would be a mercy.

She blinks.

"Drugged, then," she murmurs, staring off into some memory or thought he cannot reach.  "Another form of torture—making the victim complicit in the shitty stuff that happens to them."

Fenris tilts his head.  Her theory has merit.

"You haven't disposed of it," Fenris points out.  If coaxing her into partaking of the potion of her own volition is the game, then failure may result in a more direct approach.

Fenris tries not to recall how she folded when faced with that weapon.

"What if I get thirsty?" she points out.

Fenris swallows, feeling his throat scrape.  The unopened casks around him seem to loom in the periphery of his gaze.

What if, indeed.

 

4.

It has given up on mindless chatter in favor of weeping.

Fenris eases his head further into the cask he pried open, enjoying the echo of his slurping.  The wine coats his throat with the itch inherent in drier blends.  He always could trust Danarius to tailor his punishments down to the minute detail.

Fenris refuses to beg or scream for the kind of respite such breaking would afford him.

Another stifled sniffle filters through the wood and Fenris clenches his fingers into the rim.  The broken gasp which follows seems to shake the walls around him.  He whips his head out, the damp ends of his hair sticking to his cheeks and neck.

"Is this your latest attempt at manipulation?  Incessant weeping?" Fenris sneers.

Its weeping eases in volume, but its curled form shakes harder, its head still bend toward its chest.

"You will gain no pity from me, Demon," Fenris hisses, draping his arms across the rim of his cask.

This earns a choked gasp.

"Cease this display."

It continues.

Fenris remains poised over his cask.  The wine sits heavy in his stomach.

"Quiet," Fenris demands.

It does not.

Fenris eases up on shaky legs and staggers toward its crumpled form.  He will not endure another moment of this demon's attempts at trickery.  One of his feet drags and he steadies himself against a shelf to his right.  His hand curls around a broken bottle, relishing the bite of glass in his palm.

The thing hiccups on its next sob and Fenris throws the bottle.

Glass shatters upon impact with the wall beside it and Fenris watches it flinch back, uncurling to stare at him with wide, red-rimmed eyes.

A door slams open and her next flinch is much more violent as her head jerks toward the sound.

"You breaking my shit, you stupid bitch?" the man shouts and she scurries backwards on her hands, the shards of glass crunching beneath her.

Fenris watches the man drag her up the stairs by her hair and he screams alongside her, slamming his fists against the wall of stone between them until his hands ache and his prison grows silent once more.

 

5.

Fenris sits, still and silent, pressing as far into the shadowed corner of his cell as he can.  He watches the man drag her back into the room, wrenching her arm when she stumbles down a stair.  She keeps her gaze directed at the floor before her.

The man shoves her down the last few steps and chuckles when she falls into the wall at the bottom.

"Watch out," the man cautions with a smug smile.

She says nothing.

The man retreats back up the stairs and the door clicks shut.  She stays pressed against the wall, just breathing.

Fenris eases to his feet after several long moments, but stalls when she turns and meets his gaze.

"Good," she murmurs, straightening.  "You're still here."

Fenris watches her stagger forward.  Her right eye has swollen shut, the skin now a myriad of colors.  It takes much of his restraint not to step back.

She raises a hand and her palm settles on both stone and air.  This time, Fenris does stumble back.

"Jesus."  She presses her other hand to her mouth and takes her own step back, her uninjured eye fluttering in quick blinks.  Her gaze slides back to him.  "Did you get dizzy, too?"

"I—yes."  Fenris regains his footing and steps closer.

She hums and crosses her arms.  Her eye appears intact, barring the heavy, swollen weight of her lid and the discoloration.  The state of her ribs remains unclear beneath her odd tunic, but her stance still leaves the brunt of her weight to her right leg.

Fenris has the urge to ask after her palms.

"What are you doing?"

"Thinking," she murmurs, tucking a strand of unkempt hair behind her ear.  "I can see the wall and I know it's there, but it also isn't," she stresses, "And I mean, since you're not a hallucination..."

"You changed your mind," Fenris prompts.

Nevermind his own revelations.

"The bottle," she points out, raising an eyebrow.  "I might've chalked that up to a psychotic break, but that fucker heard it and I've scoured this basement a hundred times and I know it wasn't there before."

"I apologize."  Fenris swallows, gaze slipping to where the glass once lay.  The man had collected the shards hours ago and, for one unsettling moment, he had wondered if the man could see him, too.  "I had no idea—"

"It's fine."  She flaps a hand at him and almost rolls her eyes.

Fenris clenches his fists at her flippancy and takes another step closer.

"It is not fine.  I caused you undue harm."

"No, shithead up there did that," she points out, jerking a thumb toward the ceiling.  "I mean, don't throw anymore bottles because I really can't afford another eye to go out of commission..." she tilts her head and purses her lips, "...unless you wanna try hitting that asshole with a Molotov cocktail."

Fenris stares at her, furrowing his brows.

"Molotov?"

"Plus, you thought I was a demon and blah, blah, let's just move past it, okay?"

She tips her head at him, more earnest than Fenris can almost believe, and he finds himself nodding back after a moment, her chatter drawing a small smile to his lips.

"My name is Fenris."

Her lips purse into something of a smile in return.

"I'm Helena."  She hums and clears her throat.  "So.  Got any idea what this is about?" she wonders, waving at the wall-not-wall between them.

Fenris turns his gaze to the barrier, but his thoughts remain on the novelty of standing so close to his odd cellmate for quite some time.


End file.
